


Long As That Matters...

by mayamaia



Category: Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Genre: Angst, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-10
Updated: 2012-12-10
Packaged: 2017-11-20 19:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/589001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayamaia/pseuds/mayamaia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes time for Illya to come to terms with what he has and what he doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long As That Matters...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kleenexwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kleenexwoman/gifts).



> The prompts were: jealousy, decay, jazz. My inspiration went everywhere and I still feel this needs work.

1962

The night Illya Kuryakin first heard Napoleon Solo call him "friend", they had taken refuge in a tiny club in Harlem where a tiny black man played a baritone saxophone with all the warmth of the August evening.   The moment Illya heard the word drop from his partner's lips as a footnote to their ordered drinks, he felt the resonance of the deepest notes echo in his abdomen, an answering flutter higher in his chest.

A few hours and a fistfight later, he fell asleep with wandering notes curling through his head.  In his dreams, the questing chords morphed into the branches of a silver sapling, shaking out new green leaves above the ground of a cold and stony field.

The next morning found Illya in a music shop, making better his acquaintance with American music.

* * *

1964

Clara Richards, Clara Valdar.  She called and Solo answered without hesitation.

For all his apprehension and for all the dangers to both of their persons, Illya appreciated the chance for once to protect Napoleon from a gentler threat.  It was a thing that drew the line between working partners and friends, and it proved the word Illya had begun to make some effort to use.

Illya wielded the chisel that finally separated Napoleon from his charge, who shook the sting from her hand as she thanked him. The Russian answered by reflex, distracted by his partner. Kuryakin had noticed with some confusion that Solo's wistful gaze rested, for that moment, on the husband's hand.

Later, alone, Illya spoke up.  "I made some assumptions in Terbuf.  But I grow less sure."

"Hm?" came a distracted answer.

 "I assumed you entertained a desire to have Clara back, as your own." His voice grew thoughtful and he added, "But on reflection, you take great care not to disrupt marriages in general."

Napoleon looked up and shrugged. "My vows died with my wife. If I can't honor my own..." His voice trailed off.

Illya blinked and sat, speechless.

* * *

More and more often, the evenings found Illya Kuryakin in Harlem, when not at work. He visted a variety of jazz clubs as he tried to chase down the ends of whirling lines of his own thoughts, unsure how or why they had come unglued. Eventually he would always find himself back at that first one he'd entered. He was even getting to know the people who worked there, the waiters, the bartender, the man on the stage.

* * *

1965

There was a sour feeling in Illya's stomach as Napoleon encouraged him to leave, straightening Illya's jacket for him, brushing him aside like an irritating fly.  True to the act, Illya stumbled comically away from Napoleon's chivalry in front of the girl, internally wondering why he was falling so easily into the role.  He didn't need to pretend that he didn't want to leave.  He didn't even need to give a thought to make his steps falter as he focused his eyes away from their flirtations.

The irritation caught in his throat later when Illya discussed the scene with Napoleon outside the casino, under rustling trees, over the flowing waters of a small inlet. The smell of damp leaves and fungus was stronger than the scent of the sea.

Still later his annoyance rose like bile upon seeing the girl's lips locked against Napoleon's in his hotel room.  The sensation rebelled, twisting Illya's mouth as he announced his presence by suddenly opening the drapes.  But it fell away as Napoleon gratifyingly transferred his focus onto the mission, onto Illya, onto the glasses they clinked together until the girl raised her own voice to demand attention from _someone_.  Illya smiled and conceded, having proof enough of his worth for now.  The sharp scent of champagne, that elegantly controlled decay of choicest fruits, rose from the glass Illya held to her lips.

Months passed, and that rebellious feeling in his gut kept coming back.

* * *

A fetid corner of South America, and all the rotten things seemed to cling to Illya alone. The sickly scents of muddy slime and soured sweat clothed him more completely than his shredded rags.

Napoleon, naturally, sat pristine, untouched.  Well, unmarred.  He was touching and being touched, as usual.

Illya nearly growled into the engine he was fixing, one corroded fitting between him and the drive home.  It hardly seemed right.  She wasn't Napoleon's type.  Too talkative.  Too assertive.  Too... difficult.  Napoleon didn't do difficult.

 _With one exception? But I am just... I am his friend.  There are different rules where I am concerned._ But here, with her, that line was blurring.  And Napoleon was ignoring him when he had asked for help.  Rust and grime flaked off the outside of the radiator where Illya's fingernails scraped it.

Finally jerking the last rusted part into place, Illya registered the same old, tired phrases, the same old, tired song, unmodulated, unmeaningful.  No, the line was not blurring enough.

He didn't even smile, too tired and troubled to try, but raised his voice in sarcastic simultaneity.  "...the wine, the warmth, and us." Then Illya turned and spoke his mind.

Illya sped off with his irate passengers, unsure what he had gained from the performance.  When he slept on the plane, his dreams sang in dissonance, of a tree with bare branches, something swinging from its boughs.

* * *

Two days later, home, cleared from medical, Napoleon was speaking no more than the minimum to him.  The dark head lolled like it still ached from Salty's screeching in the jeep.  So, for that matter, did Illya's.  To soften the pounding, he wandered into Harlem, to a small - and now familiar - club.

The proprietor, with a bearing that belied his stature, commanded the center of the stage as he did for at least a brief period every night.  Dark, wrinkled fingers danced over the golden body of his instrument.  Though his eyes seemed to be closed and he was obviously entangled in the twirling lines of the music, Mr. James must have seen Illya enter, because his eyebrows raised and he nodded a greeting.

Illya settled himself at his usual table, taking care not to aggravate his sunburn.  A double vodka appeared  before him and half an hour steeped in sound slipped by without making a mark on his memory.

The set done, Mr. James moved off the stage and pulled a seat over to sit next to Mr. Kuryakin.  Illya sluggishly turned to his companion and nodded politely, receiving a silent nod in return.

"It is always a pleasure to listen to you play, Mr. James," Illya offered after a few moments.

The dark brow beetled at him.  "Somehow I don't think you heard a note of it.  Not tonight."

"Hm," Illya conceded,  "I may be slightly distracted. But it is no offence to your efforts, I assure you."

"Well then," the kindly old man replied, "Tell me... what is it you've done?"

Blue eyes flashed up toward  brown ones made milky from cataracts.

"Now," the greying head shook at the blond one, "you are far too closed in to be haunted by other people's follies. So what have you got bouncing around in there that's botherin you?"

Illya shrugged. "I am not so certain. I found myself... frustrated, at my friend who was only doing what he does best.  But what he does best was taking him away when I had asked his assistance." He rapped his fingers against the tabletop and added, "To no purpose.  Even he didn't think she was worth it."

"This your friend who comes in sometimes? Dark hair, arrives with you, leaves with a lady?"

Illya smiled wryly. "A better description in fewer words would be crass.  That is he." He twirled his empty glass thoughtfully. "At any rate, I let the lady of the day know that she was one of many.  She was not pleased, and expressed herself.  And now Napoleon is not exactly angry, I think he knows his error, but nor is he talking to me."

Eyebrows rose on a wrinkled forehead. The tiny old man scrutinized Illya for a moment, then patted the table.  "It'll work out.  You said yourself that he didn't think she was worth much. Not one o' them ladies matter to your Napoleon and you do.  Remember that.  Not one."

Illya cleared his throat.  "And when one of them does matter to him?"

"Ah."  A shrug. "You've been with him longer.  You still matter most." He gave Illya a stern look. "Long as you still friends, that is.  And that takes you being a good friend to him too.  Look," Mr. James cleared his throat, "given two ways to like a person, the body doesn't last long but a conversation can last forever.  You gotta care about the part that lasts forever if you want to keep liking each other, friends, coworkers, brothers or wives. Give that conversation what it deserves, long as that matters to you, ain't nothing or no one that'll keep him away long."

He patted the table again with a hand brown and wrinkled as a nut, stood and turned away. 

The girls didn't seem quite as troubling after that. Illya might not have all of Napoleon, but he had the best of him.

* * *

1967

Kuryakin held his head in his hands, hunched over the hard, smooth hawthorn someone had sawn and shaped to make a table surface.  What a waste of such wood, he idly thought, but it will last a long time.

His fingers traced familiar marks that marred the table surface, and the Russian hummed to himself.

_Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,_   
_For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,_   
_For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,_   
_Here is a strange and bitter crop._

The club was as dingy as when he had first entered it, but the stage was silent and cold.  Dust hung in the air, and the darkness was only broken by narrow bands of sodium light that snuck into the stillness from outside.

He raised his head at the creak of wood which heralded company, but lowered it again upon hearing his partner's voice speaking his name in a questing tone.  "Illya?" the voice plaintively sought, "are you in here?"

He sighed and reluctantly replied.  "Yes Napoleon.  I am."

Out of the denser shadows stepped Solo, with a polite hesitance pulled over his perennial confidence. In silence he moved to Illya's side, and in silence he took the seat next to him.  For a few moments he allowed the silence to hold, a testament and respect to the silence in Illya's soul.

Finally Illya spoke.  "He was playing the first time I came in here.  I think having the chance to play was half the reason he owned the club."

Napoleon nodded.  "I was with you that time, right?  We had just dodged some goons a few streets over. Ran into them again when we left too."

Illya sighed.  "Yes.  But ours were... professionals.  He was killed by children, Napoleon."  Another sigh. "Nobody who knew him, just ...young boys without prospects or parents or any reason to think life would get better, especially since the riots a few years ago.  Too little to lose to think another negro's life was worth more than his money. No way to know what he had to give."

"Hmm." Sympathy shone in Solo's face.  "The worst evils of greed, but from a group of the greedy who deserve better."

"Yes.  And it's ...it is symptomatic of the poverty that grips places like this.  It rots them to the core and the kids can't get out, and those who survive...  I wonder how THRUSH can be worse than this."

"But at least THRUSH you can fight."

"Well, and THRUSH makes this worse to line their pockets." Illya studied his hands, then looked up with sudden fire, "But the maddening thing, Napoleon, is that this is where the music comes from.  This! Places and people beaten down into the dirt.  Happy people never learn to play like Mr. James did."

His partner nodded, then stood and walked to the stage.  Solo paced its length, then stood in the middle and smiled at the Russian. "Do you suppose he'll haunt this place?" he asked, twiddling his fingers as if they danced over the body of a saxophone.

A smile pulled at the corner of Illya's mouth. "Ghosts are an unprovable concept and have no place in science."

"Can't you just hear it, though?  Some new owner will make this just another bar, but late at night Mr. James will play," Napoleon started to sway to imagined music, "and the patrons will think it's a jukebox.  A pair of kids will get up and dance," he mimed holding a girl and giving her a slow dip, "and then when the song is over they'll look for the nickelodeon to start another.  And it won't be there, just a little black ghost with a brilliant white grin."

Illya couldn't help but grin himself.  He sat back and watched his partner dance over the dusty stage, and laughed when Napoleon beckoned to join him.  It was tempting to imagine that the swirling music in his memory was drifting in the air.

* * *

"Careful of the door-" _scrape_ "-way.  Oh well, never mind.  It's covered with scratches anyway." Napoleon took off his gloves and rubbed his chilly hands together.

About to leave the old club and its hypothetical haunting, Illya had doubled back to take the table at which he'd been sitting.  Solo had shrugged and offered assistance and now, after some awkward tests of their rope tying skills and a short drive, they were back at their apartment building and wrestling it into Illya's apartment.

Illya looked at the new scrape and shrugged. "I will just mend it with a walnut," he said, "and perhaps cover the whole thing with a cloth."

"No, you can't hide it.  What's the point in having a piece of pilfered furniture if you can't show it off?"

Illya only replied with a bark of laughter and went to the kitchen to poke around in the refrigerator.  He emerged with a plate full of leftover roast beef and various sandwich paraphernalia.  Napoleon moved to his side and together they assembled three sandwiches, semi-jokingly checking expiration dates and sniffing the contents of various jars.

They proceeded to the couch, Napoleon giving an admonishment against spilling. Illya beetled his brows and replied in a clipped manner "It is _my_ furniture.   I can treat it as I wish." With that, Illya put his plate on his side of the couch.

"And where do you intend to sit, my contrary friend?" Napoleon asked, slightly distracted with wondering how Illya's first sandwich could have already disappeared.

Illya raised an eyebrow and, without batting an eye, pulled up his new table.  He perched on the edge, picked up his plate and seemed to inhale half of his second sandwich in a bite.  Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he  kicked off his shoes and smugly propped his feet against Napoleon's thigh.

"Hey!" Solo yelped, "The couch might be yours but the suit is not." He grabbed his partner's toes and moved the offending limbs, only to have them return, this time to his lap.

Illya's grin, like a cat's, showed teeth. "Everything here is mine.  The couch is mine, this sandwich is mine.  The table I claim by right of salvage and the man by right of saving his behind on a regular basis."

"Oh, is that so?" Napoleon's eyebrows climbed to his hair.  "That works both ways, partner mine." After a moment of shuffling to remove shoes, Solo swung his legs over so his stockinged feet ended up in Illya's lap, knocking Illya's feet off his own in the process.

Illya responded by digging his feet under his partner's legs, wiggling his toes while he finished his sandwich.

Napoleon squirmed a little. "Cut that out, Illya, you're getting more of me than you bargained for."

The Russian raised an eyebrow, answered around his mouthful, "I don't recall making any bargains," and wiggled his toes again.

Solo's eyes widened a little and Illya was surprised to see the man blushing as he choked out, "No seriously, partner, you m-might want to stop that."

Realization belatedly dawned and Illya pulled his feet back in as nonchalant a manner as he could.  To cover, he trapped Napoleon's feet under an elbow, claimed "My fingers are better at this task anyway," and started to tickle the left heel.

Slightly out of breath due to holding it earlier, Solo could barely chuff out laughter as he fought his toes from their confinement.  Once free, with his feet firmly planted on the floor, Napoleon leaned with elbows on knees and looked up through hair fallen over his eyes with a subtly relieved smile.   "Not fair, my friend."

The word, perhaps, or the presence of the table where it first was said, brought Illya to lean forward so his face was close to the man who'd just called him friend, again, casually, because he said it all the time.  "Since when do you let your hair grow that long, my friend?"

"Since I've been too busy saving your, ah, assets to get to a barber." He petulantly pushed the dark forelock out of his face.

"Mm-hmm. Well Napoleon," Illya answered with a smile that totally failed to be shy, "you do know that a penny saved is a penny earned, yes?"

Solo looked up again, seeking explanation.  He froze, realizing just how close Illya was when his own movement made blonde hair briefly waft off his friend's face.  "Ah, what exactly do you mean by that, Illya?"

"I mean to imply that you have earned most of my, ahem, assets already." Another feline grin, and he continued, "Care to make a bargain for the rest?"

The bargain was easily struck.

* * *

In the depths of Illya's dreams that night, flowering hawthorn grew around the base of the tree as its roots stretched deep into the earth.  He tried to ignore the slightest scent of mushrooms around the bole, as he avoided glancing toward a withering branch or three.


End file.
